Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

To keep the pond clean I made a 'y' shape pipe and drilled it full of holes. I then capped the ends and ran it along the bottom of the pond up the side and through the pond just below the lip. This way anything small that falls to the bottom of the pond gets sucked through the holes in the pipe then into the pump tank through the pump and up to the filters.

It's still a new system but seems to be working well enough for a first attempt. Regular water tests show no ammonia or nitrite or nitrate. This is down to the fact that as of the moment I don't have anywhere near enough fish in my system and the filters, GBs and plants account for the removal and transformation of everything between them.

The other thing is that it is getting towards the end of the growing season for a lot of plants in an uncovered system. The fish pond is getting cold at night now (below 10c) and the fish are eating less, in fact if everything is still working correctly by the start of the next season I hope to have about 3-4 times the weight of fish. The original plan accounted for up to 5kg of fish per grow bed. I intend to let everything tick over for the time being as my broccoli and lettuce are showing signs of growth albeit slow.

So that's my system so far and here's a pic of the pond before I added my 'bridge, fish shade deck and my backup air pump system, more about that soon.

Well hello again. It's winter here where I am and so I've not had much to say about my system in the past few months. The fish are a lot more docile than they are in the summer and eat far too little to produce anywhere near enough to make any impact on my grow beds. That said at least they are healthy and everything is still running fine. 5 months continuous running and the bell syphons haven't missed a beat

I did have one head scratching issue though...... The water level float in my pump tank kept dropping. after checking everything I eventually realised that a mole had dug under the shallow end of the pond and the lip had lowered by almost a centimetre. This caused the water to overflow there and reduced the overflow to the pump tank. A quick lift and backfill with stones, gravel and sand raised it back up and returned the level to the previous height and resumed the original overflow rate. Phew all sorted.

So far I've only grown celery, some lettuces and I've got some very slow broccoli on the go. My pond is crystal clear with no ammonia or nitrites and all the nitrates are used up on the plants. I can't wait for spring and see my first full growing season to start.

I'll be back when I've got some more to tell or some updated photos. Probably next year. Happy new year

'Know' expert! Haha I see what you did there. You obviously have a great grasp of our language. Good on you!

Looking forward to the new photos. Happy New Year, whenever it is you guys celebrate it

-K98

Nice looking system. Would it be possible for you to post a simple overview or sketch of your plumbing and flow controls? It isn't quite clear from the photos of your drawings.

Kiara, Ha ha ha a good grasp of the language......... I don't think so, it's taken me nearly nine days to realise you were referring to the time of day when you said 'whenever you celebrate it' I was thinking '' January 1st like everyone else'' oh I'm slow, too much Christmas spirit....... It's just wearing off now!

Scott, hi there. I'll try and get some clearer photos of the drawings and post them. It's pointless just trying to explain with photos of the actual system because most of the pipes are hidden and the only visible ones will be hidden once my garden starts growing again in Spring. My aim was to try and make a system with minimum pipe work showing.

Last Saturday I converted one of my raised beds into a 'test wicking bed' if all works out well I'll be adding a self watering 3 tier wicking bed to my system soon.

You have done your homework indeed. System looks marvelous. I'm curious what the sections in the pre-built pond are for? It looks like one goes all the way around the top edge... What is your ambient air temperature there in January? Did you say what fish you are going to run? Are the flow rates what you calculated?
I bet you can't wait for Spring.
Thanks for sharing.

Hello boss, I did indeed do a lot of calculations (for some reason I like doing them) however, that said I did have a few surprises...... The pond overflows into a pump tank. Water comes from the bottom of the pond through perforated pipes up the side and through into the pump tank. In my calculations I measured the head height from the pump tank with water at the overflow limit. I soon realised that with rain it overflowed (I knew it was going to) BUT if both beds triggered a drain and topped up the sumps (approximately 5 minutes) the sumps would continue to feed water back to the pond for a longer period than if just one bed triggered. If that happened just as it stopped raining it meant the system was overflowing and no water was coming back into the system. This means the pump is pumping at a head height of 1.3m but it can pump up to 1.8m that meant the head height got bigger as the level dropped in the pump tank. That slowed the flow of water (higher to pump) and if the level got 1.8m it would virtually stop. On paper the head height was constant but in the real world it changes in a system like mine. This meant rethinking the head height by lowering the height of the pipe on the wall. I couldn't lower it to much as it would just back up .luckily I had just enough leeway. Now my pump level only moves down to halfway (ish) at the lowest and a heavy rain tops up the pump tank which lowers head height which makes it more efficient at pumping. I learned all that the first week I had my system running. I sat in the rain watching and listening until I figured it out. Now it never misses a beat!

The ledge around the pond is for water plants that like roots below water and leaves above...... I have minimum plants in the water (just enough to give me and the fish something to look at) I have comets and koi in the pond and will be adding some more varieties soon. My system is biased towards blending in with the garden, creating a water feature and using its bi products as a source for growing my veg. I understand it's not quite as efficient as a full blown AP system but it suits our needs. My aim is to expand slightly with wicking beds (constant flow wicking bed with return to the sump and filtered inlet and outlet) this will be done one weekend when the other half is not about. She doesn't like me making things but loves them once they are finished and working!

Finally, temperatures in winter. Well like the planet over things are not stable here in France. The lowest we've had so far this winter during the night has been -2c but during the day it got above 10c. recently it's been about 3 to 6 during the night and during the day can get up to between 15 to 18c although the chill winds make it feel colder. It's so strange to be in a Teeshirt an 6 degrees c putting something outside not feeling cold then the day after its warmer but with the breeze it feels freezing! Roll on Spring!

Last but not least I planted my garlic today in my test wicking bed. Checked on the Internet and it says my area January and February so in they went.

Awesome, thanks for the reply.
I love this "I sat in the rain watching and listening until I figured it out."
I am totally with you. I got lucky and figured it as well. Mine is done in masonry and what I got was and already set in stone. Mostly I did the sitting there watching thing. I did have to add an air lift pump to make the solids lift outflow (SLO) to get my flow up from the bottom as my FT pond is just under two meters deep. Oh and it's covered from the rain. I have wondered how the outdoor APers deal with rain?

It's so warm here I worked in the forest with a tee-shirt on.

It hasn't frozen overnight in three days. (I hope saying this makes it snow!)
Thanks for the clarification on the built-in planters.

Your pond looks good with all the plants hanging down from above. I have a terrace next to my system and I'm growing a wysteria around it to let it hang down and try and create a natural outdoor room.
Your pond looks raised. How big is the difference between the pond water level and the grow bed water level. Mine is about 70 to 80cm lower than the grow beds.

WICKING BED TRIAL.....

I completed my test 'wicking bed' at the weekend. If it works well I'll be adding one to my system. This one is a vegetable bed I converted. I noticed that during the summer I could pour 10 or 20L of water on my veg and it just didn't go anywhere. Some run off, some evaporated and some went down into the ground. My plants just got what they could. So, wicking bed trial. The idea being that adding 10L of water gives my plants full access to all 10L, no waste, they take what they need when they need it.

First I removed all the soil from the veg bed.

Next I levelled the base

Next step was to place a thick plastic liner making sure to fold the corners and not cut them. The idea being to make a waterproof container. (I'm sure most people know but it's for the benefit of those that don't).

I then drilled lots and lots of holes in my yellow 50mm pipe.

I secured a 25mm pipe to the end of the yellow pipe for the outlet.

I drilled through the plastic liner and through the wooden side and fitted a 25mm bulkhead.

You can just see in the above photo the White pipe (top left) has been fitted to the yellow pipe and then run through the wooden side.

Next up I had to cover the yellow pipe with an old sheet and then sand. This sheet stops the roots of the plants and sand from entering the holes in the pipe.

The pipe has to be flat on the level floor before covering with the sheet and sand.

Next up is covering the sand with a good compost full of compost worms. I have made a box last year and always put my kitchen waste in it. I threw some soil in and it just gets literally thousands of worms all working their magic.

I put the compost and worms on the sand